Metacert, aimed at detecting malware on Slack, HipChat and soon Skype and Microsoft Teams, raises $1.2 million

According to a post on VentureBeat, Metacert has raised $1.2 million in its latest round of funding. In a Skype interview, Metacert co-founder Paul Walsh told VentureBeat:

“The Metacert Security Bot detects malware, phishing, and pornography in direct messages and Slack channels and works on Slack, HipChat, and soon Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Facebook Messenger. The problem is that phishing is typically thought of as a problem in email…But if a lot of people are using [messaging] instead of email, then it stands to reason that the future of malware and phishing attacks is also going to take place inside these messaging services, and that’s why Metacert exists.”

For example, on HipChat, people can use the bot to block specific links beyond the more than 700 million links that Security bot already blocks. In addition to security, the bot has an analytics dashboard for enterprise users showing all the links, files, and documents shared in chat and categorizes each link. There are 60 link categories available and the category system can help enterprise users use the information that is collected beyond just security use.

“This is good for two reasons: one for security compliance, and then, secondly, it’s useful if you just want to go back and [you] think ‘Hey I know that Sheila actually posted this link but I don’t know where the link is or what it’s called’. It gives you some high-level user statistics at the top, and we find that pretty much every customer that gets security also opts for this.”

Metacert has a laser focus on security, but Metacert also created bCRM, a marketing management bot for Slack and Facebook Pages. There is Metacert’s developer website that helps developers add an extra layer of security for their apps and users to protect against malicious links.

“We started building security integrations into bots two years ago, and we started with HipChat. We see a world where you’re not afraid of opening the wrong link. In that context, we built the world’s most advanced content classification platform so that we can protect companies and users from malicious links that appear inside applications. And we are focused now primarily on messaging service applications.”

In this round of funding, the $1.2 million amount raised included contributions from Moneta Ventures, with other investor participation from Shaked Ventures, Sierra Angel Network, Monta Vista Capital, and Terry Jones, founding chair of Kayak.com. Currently, Metacert already has a Chrome extension and iOS web browser available.